Richard Garlick believes the £12 million club-record transfer of Salomon Rondon was money well spent with the striker enjoying an encouraging start to his West Bromwich Albion career.

Rondon, who turned 26 on Wednesday, switched from Russian side Zenit St Petersburg last month in a deal that surpassed the £10 million laid out for Nigerian forward Brown Ideye last summer.

The Venezuela international made his debut as a sub at Watford and grabbed his first Albion goal in the 1-0 win over Stoke City.

His transfer was far from straight-forward, but Albion's head of football administration feels it was worth the effort.

Garlick said: "Everybody worked very hard to make that happen and there were a few logistical issues at the end involving airports and planes, but ultimately we got him in and we’re very pleased with what we've got.

"You've seen he's a handful as a player and the fact he got off the mark against Stoke was exactly what he needed.

"His performance against Chelsea - there were a lot of people talking about that performance, including one or two Chelsea players, as to how well he'd done.

"The more technical directors I speak to, the more people say what a good acquisition he is.

"We hope he continues to build on what he's got."

Rondon scored his first Albion goal in the win at Stoke

Rondon has been relatively prolific at all of his previous clubs, most notably with Zenit where he scored 25 goals in 50 appearances.

And Garlick admitted he was somewhat surprised Albion landed a player of Rondon's calibre and international pedigree, with Liverpool having previously tracked him.

"A lot of people you speak to at different clubs talk very highly of the player," Garlick added.

"A lot of people knew him from his time at Malaga when he was obviously playing in Europe and we got a lot of reports about him.

"If you asked me at the start of the window would we get a player like Rondon, I probably would have been a bit sceptical about it.

"But sometimes an opportunity presents itself as it did in that case where you have a window to get it done and that's pretty much what happened in this case."

New legislation inside Russia capping the number of foreign players at domestic clubs forced Zenit to decide whether to keep Brazilian hitman Hulk or Rondon.

They chose to retain Hulk, who like Rondon has 43 caps for his country, and West Brom pounced.

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Garlick added: "Rondon became surplus to requirements and when we found out about that through his agent, who is someone we knew and already has players at this club and we get on well with, he presented us with an opportunity.

"Tony (Pulis) made a few, well hundreds of calls to various people about the player and took some great references from people he trusted and all of the reports came back very positive.

"It was then a case of meeting with his representatives in the south of England, where I happened to be at the time and thrashing something out over a six-hour period in a hotel where we pretty much reached a conclusion.

"There were added complications of agreeing a fee with the Russian club and some toing and froing because sometimes things can get lost in translation.

"Ultimately within a few days those issues had been resolved and it was then a case of just logistically getting the player over to the UK.

"We were able to take advice on how best to do that given his passport situation and able to utilise the fact his spouse is an EU national and speed up the process."